#Terrorism - Germany Put on Edge After Unprecedented String of Attacks

 

Germany was put on edge after an unprecedented series of four attacks in the last week left many dead and wounded, placing pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to stem the violence.

 

The latest incident occurred late Sunday at a music festival in the Bavarian town of Ansbach, near Nuremberg, when a 27-year-old man identified as a Syrian refugee blew himself up near the entrance to the event, injuring 12 others.

 

The bombing followed a shooting spree at a shopping center in Munich on Friday, in which an 18-year-old man shot dead nine people before killing himself. The attacker, identified as an Iranian-German who was born and raised in Germany, had no apparent connection with a terror organization, police said. In another assault on Sunday, a machete-wielding 21-year-old male, also identified as Syrian refugee, killed a pregnant woman in a town south of Stuttgart. Last Monday, an ax assault by an Afghan asylum seeker allegedly inspired by Islamic State wounded two train passengers near Wuerzburg.

 

“We’re shaken by the events that occurred over the weekend,” government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer told reporters on Monday, adding that Merkel is closely following the developments from the countryside outside of Berlin. The four assaults don’t offer a “clear picture” about motives, Demmer said.

 

Germany has largely avoided large scale terrorist attacks on its soil, in contrast with the assaults that killed hundreds in Paris, Brussels and Nice over the last year. While the spate of violence in Germany is smaller in scale, the incidents could revive pressure on Merkel over migration as she struggles to confront a range of crises buffeting Europe.

 

 

Stephan Mayer, a lawmaker in Merkel’s Christian Democratic-led bloc, urged calm and warned against hasty judgments, particularly over the chancellor’s refugee policy, which triggered public anxiety after more than a million migrants made their way to Germany in 2015.

 

"There is a rising nervousness among our public,” Mayer, who sits on parliament’s internal affairs committee, told BBC Radio on Monday. “You have to differentiate -- the events of Friday have nothing to do with our refugee policy. It is completely wrong to blame Angela Merkel and her refugee policy for this incident"... Read more.